


another pretty vein just dies

by rumandraisins



Series: be careful making wishes in the dark [4]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Accidental Death, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Blood, I mean they all have dark themes, Knives, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, but this one Needs that tag, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 03:15:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13022091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rumandraisins/pseuds/rumandraisins
Summary: Serial killer boyfriends!au because Koushi and Tooru are wonderful mentors, which is good since Akaashi Keiji – just another good person stuck in a bad situation – is really desperate to learn.





	another pretty vein just dies

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really sorry.
> 
> I know I keep saying that but I feel it very, very strongly for this one in particular.

Keiji’s mother warns him: don’t let love consume you.

It’s dangerous, Keiji’s sister says. And more often than not, never worth it.

Keiji is young when they tell him this. 

But, he figures, it’s the kind of warning that would make sense for his mother, after their father divorces her for a leggy bottle-blonde who’s barely legal, and takes with him all of their money when he goes. It’s the kind of bitter remark that would make sense for his sister, who gets left behind at the altar by her longtime boyfriend, barefoot and pregnant. 

It makes sense.

But Keiji doesn’t completely understand, because he’s never been in love.

And then Bokuto-san.

Bokuto-san crashes into his life with the force of a rampaging herd of bulls, noisy and wild and breaking every barrier Keiji had ever set to separate himself from the rest of the world. Bokuto-san shouts his name to the heavens, _“AKKAAAAAAASSHHHI,”_ whenever he jumps to spike, as if he didn’t already occupy all of Keiji’s attention. Bokuto-san has at least thirty-seven weaknesses and Keiji spends their first year playing together learning to cover for them all. Bokuto-san has mood swings and Keiji devices a system to avert most of them and to try to snap him out when he’s feeling his most miserable, too. Bokuto-san gets called simple-minded by about half the people in his life, but on the rare occassions when he’s wistful and serious, Bokuto-san is the wisest person Keiji knows. 

Bokuto-san looks at Keiji with gold eyes set in fire and smiles at him like he’s the reason why happiness exists in the world. 

Bokuto-san.

Bokuto-san.

Bokuto-san.

When Keiji realizes that he’s in love, it’s far too late for his family’s warnings to save him. 

But it’s okay. 

For all that he looks like he has no idea what to do with his muscles off the court, Bokuto-san’s hands are surprisingly gentle. And they cradle Keiji’s heart like there’s nothing else in the world that will ever be more valuable.

He’s just clumsy, sometimes.

Unfortunately.

  


* * *

  
It’s the middle of the night when Keiji gets the call that changes his life. 

Bokuto-san is crying. 

“Aka-“ A sob. “Please. _Please,_ I didn’t mean... Akaashi-“

Keiji’s awake in a second. “Bokuto-san, what wrong?” he asks urgently, tugging on the first set of clothes he can find, stumbling around the darkness of his dorm room and thanking all the gods he can think of that his roommate is out for the night.

Bokuto-san doesn’t stop crying. 

“Bokuto-san, _where are you?”_

“M-my apartment... Akaashi, I... I...”

Keiji shouldn’t have been thanking the gods. They don’t particularly care to give mortals any favors.

When Keiji opens the door to Bokuto-san’s apartment, the air tastes strangely metallic. He will remember this moment for the rest of his life, and ask himself sometimes, if he’s just been in denial then, because he knows what blood smells like.

Or maybe that’s something he found out for himself, after.

He finds Bokuto-san huddled in the corner of his small kitchen, wedged in the space between the wall and a cabinet, still crying. He also finds the body of Bokuto-san’s roommate, still with a knife stuck to his chest, lying in a pool of blood.

A ringing sound fills Keiji’s ears as he stumbles back, and runs for the bathroom so he can throw up what feels like everything he’s ever eaten in his life. He’s shaking. He can’t close his eyes. Every time he does, the picture of what he’s just seen burns in the back of his eyelids like a brand. 

Bokuto-san explains it like this, stuttering, in between crying fits that each last forever: he’d been trying to cook. His roommate wasn’t supposed to be home until the weekend, and he didn’t have much of a budget left for a midnight snack takeout. He had a knife in his hand. His roommate jumps at him, out of nowhere. To surprise him, probably. A prank, probably.

Bokuto-san thought he was being robbed.

It’s an accident, right? 

It’s self-defense, right?

It’s okay, right?

Keiji can’t breathe. Keiji can’t think. Keiji can’t lie.

Yes, it was an accident, but Bokuto-san wasn’t actually getting attacked. 

It’s not self-defense. 

It’s involuntary manslaughter.

It’s not okay.

Keiji spends the next hour shaking, shaking, shaking, unable to close his eyes, to move, to see. You go to prison for that. You plead guilty and you go to prison for that. _Prison._ Would Bokuto-san survive in prison? Keiji looks at him, still crying where he’s awkwardly fitted himself in the smallest space in the kitchen that he could find and thinks, _no._

He can’t.

Keiji loves him and he can’t survive in prison.

So Keiji has to take care of it.

He cleans Bokuto-san up, ushers him back to his room and gives him a sleeping pill. He finds a pair of gloves in the first aid kit. He finds a luggage bag in the back of Bokuto-san’s roommate’s closet. He fits the body inside, knife and all, and cleans up the... mess. He’s crying the entire time and he can barely see but he has to do this because he loves Bokuto-san and he won’t let him go to prison. Keiji takes care of it, because Keiji has Bokuto-san’s back the same way he used to have his back when they both still stood on the same court.

He tries to dump the body in a dumpster in the farthest alley he could manage to get to on his shaky legs at dawn.

On hindsight, Keiji made so many mistakes that night.

He gets caught, of course, by this woman out on her morning jog. They stare at each other wide-eyed for a moment, Keiji’s heart pounding a loud rhythm of _no, no, no, no, no._

Keiji panics.

The knife is still in Bokuto-san’s roommate’s body. 

Keiji throws up again, which is weird, because he thought he’d already thrown up everything his body had to give. 

But Keiji can’t breathe. Keiji can’t think. Keiji can’t lie.

This isn’t self-defense, either. 

It’s not even involuntary manslaughter.

It’s murder.

  


* * *

  
When Keiji returns to Bokuto-san’s apartment, mind blank and luggage filled with a different body than it did when he first walked out, there are lopsided pancakes on the coffee table.

“Akaashi!” Bokuto-san cries cheerfully, wearing a silly, owl-printed chef’s hat. “I just had the most horrible dream!”

And then, he starts retelling the events of the worst night of Keiji’s life. Except this time, there were tengu. And oni. And an unexplained flurry of great horned owls.

“...and I thought I killed him, can you believe it?” Bokuto-san finishes, grinning expectantly. 

_Yes, I can._

At least, Keiji is saved from having to say anything disastrous when it starts smelling like something is burning and Bokuto-san runs to kitchen to break out the fire extinguisher for a flame the size of Keiji’s fist. 

Keiji just stares at it all like he’s watching from somewhere beyond his body, unfeeling and detached.

“Is that a suitcase?” Bokuto-san asks when he returns, still holding the fire extinguisher aloft. “What’s inside, and why’d you bring it here? Is it a present? For me?”

Keiji looks at him, sees how Bokuto-san is happy in a way that he would never be able to be if he knew that his most horrible dream has already come true. 

And Keiji loves Bokuto-san. 

All he’s ever wanted was to see Bokuto-san be happy. 

He can live Bokuto-san’s nightmares for him, if that’s what it takes.

His grip tightens around the handle of the luggage. 

_Better this way._

When he speaks, his voice is hoarse but clear. “It’s nothing important, Bokuto-san.”

  


* * *

  
When he goes to dump the second body – because he can’t just dump them both at the same place, can he, that’ll raise more suspicion than it already does – it’s night.

He learned his lesson last time.

But he chooses an alley behind a bar, and someone stumbles out the back door to take a smoke break because Keiji’s life is one, big, tasteless joke.

He doesn’t throw up anymore, though, which is a pleasant surprise.

(The news reports two bodies found in dumpsters and the anchor speculates, _is this the work of a serial killer?_

“Really?” Tooru sniffs judgementally. “After only two bodies? How much more paranoid can you get?”

Koushi shifts in his lap and tabs another page of his textbook. “It’s not you, is it?”

“Kou-chan,” Tooru says in a tone that tells Koushi he’s seriously considering being offended. “Please. Do you really think I’d dispose of bodies so carelessly?”

“You did before you met me,” Koushi reminds him.

Which Tooru should get upset about, he knows, but he just grins and turns to suck another mark into Koushi’s shoulder instead. “And now I have you, don’t I?” he murmurs sultrily, running his hand down the line of Koushi’s arm so he can snatch the book in his hands and toss it away.

Koushi squirms, knowing full well the kind of effect it would have on Tooru, throwing his head back to smile at him warningly. “If this goes on, we’ll have to stop playing for a bit while the police do their investigating. You know that, right?”

Tooru’s eyes flick to the tv screen, trailing kisses up to Koushi’s ear. “Let me deal with it.”)

Keiji’s expecting to be walked in on again, this time. He’s surrendered to it. Anyway, his hands are covered in more blood than he could ever wash off even if he washes for the rest of his life. What’s a few liters more?

What he doesn’t expect – Bokuto-san’s college setter detaching himself from the shadows and taking hold of the hand Keiji’s using to shakily grip the knife that started it all, so confidently like he’s done it a million times.

He’s smiling. “Aka-chan, isn’t it?” 

Keiji stares.

“Yes or no, do you want to get caught?”

Keiji stares some more.

He pouts, looking put-upon. “Well, if the answer is no, Aka-chan, then you have to be a little more creative than this.”

And the answer _is_ no. Because Keiji is so tired. Keiji is so desperate. Keiji just wants everything to be okay again. 

So Keiji goes limp in his grasp, and doesn't fight it when he feels himself fall the rest of the way down to hell. “Teach me. Please.”

“My name is Oikawa-san.”

Oikawa-san teaches him a lot. 

Lesson number one is when they get walked in on again, because they’re in an alley and that means it’s inevitable somehow. There’s a place in the chest where it’s easiest to drive the knife between two ribs in a straight shot to the heart.

Oikawa-san demonstrates.

And Keiji-

Keiji is nothing if not a good student.

(“Welcome home, _sensei,”_ Koushi purrs teasingly from their bed, naked and wanting, moonlight spilling into his skin and painting it marble.

Tooru has never torn his clothes off faster in his life.)

**Author's Note:**

> \- How did Oikawa find Akaashi so fast, you ask? I don't know. He's smart. He devised a very successful algorithm based on the locations the other two bodies were found in and predicted the next possible places Akaashi might go. Or something. Don't worry about it. Just let it happen -pulls out artistic license- 
> 
> \- Ngl, this fic left me with a veeery interesting google search history. I'm not actually Evil, people who are looking in on my internet, I just really needed the research for... fangirl purposes.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


End file.
